The American Spectator - Aggrieved Minoritieshttp://spectator.org/topics/aggrieved-minorities
enThe Girl Who Cried Racismhttp://spectator.org/articles/40509/girl-who-cried-racism
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn.spectator.org/styles/article_page/s3/12589542109796.jpg?itok=b_d0XC7I" width="658" height="374" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p> Kennett, Missouri, is best known these days as the hometown of pop rock diva Sheryl Crow. Sheryl Crow and now Heather Ellis. The latter is no rock star, but she is a bona fide celebrity (or one famous for being famous). Ellis, 24, the celebrated <span><a href="http://www.semissourian.com/story/1588987.html"><span> Wal-Mart line-cutter</span></a></span>, earned her 15-minutes of celebrity when she accused a Wal-Mart shopper, cashier, assistant store manager, security guard, and Kennett police officers of racism. By the second day of the trial -- which ended last Friday in a plea bargain -- it was clear from mainstream media coverage that pretty much the whole town of Kennett was racist. </p> <p> The facts were these: Ellis, then a college student, was in line at the local Wal-Mart, when she decided her lane was moving too slowly. She then joined her cousin in a faster moving lane, cutting in front of a line of waiting customers. The customer she cut directly in front of, Teresa Kinder, objected, especially when Ellis repeatedly shoved Kinder's merchandise back down the conveyer belt. The assistant store manager and a security guard arrived and asked Ellis to leave. When she refused, police were called. Ellis was later placed under arrest, and charged with disturbing the peace, trespassing, resisting arrest, and felony assault of police officers. </p> <p> Not surprisingly, there are two very different versions of what happened. Ellis and her aunt say she was pushed by Ms. Kinder and called racial slurs. They say police roughed her up, tore her jacket, and told her to "go back to the ghetto." Police, store management and witnesses, meanwhile, say that Ellis was belligerent, and that she kicked officer Albert Fisher in the shin and hit Sgt. Joe Stewart in the mouth, splitting his lip. Whatever the truth, it is obvious that a minor instance of rude behavior and bad manners escalated into a felony assault on a peace officer. </p> <p> The mainstream media was quick to indict Kennett as a racist community. An ABC News headline read: "Heather Ellis Could Face Prison Time After Cutting the Line at Walmart." Not for assaulting police officers, mind you, but for "cutting the line." CNN's Randi Kaye went after the entire town of Kennett, accusing it of being "a community <em>known</em> <span>for racial tension." CNN showed more bias when it suggestively referred to Kennett's "predominantly white police department." (In fact, Kennett has two minority cops, which accurately reflects the percentage of minorities in the town.) Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Christian Leadership Conference noted that the town's police have been accused of racial profiling minority drivers, a charge that has been leveled, one time or another, at just about every American city and town with minorities.</span> </p> <p> Needless to say, racial tensions <em>exploded</em> <span>after Ellis made her accusations. White supremacist groups began slithering into town to spread their hateful propaganda, while big name minority activists flew in from New York and Washington DC, to further heighten tensions. Ms. Ellis's father, a local Baptist preacher, called the trial a "big, racial discrimination cover-up," which seems an odd comment since trials are supposed to promote justice, not cover up the truth. (Perhaps the state judicial system is racist too?) Ellis and her various coalitions and supporters quickly hired the top criminal lawyers in St. Louis: Scott Rosenblum and T.J. Hunsaker. When asked by reporters to comment on the charge of racism, Rosenblum would say only: "I'm not going to go there."</span> </p> <p> The fact that Rosenblum and Hunsaker had to settle for a plea bargain suggests Ellis didn't have a prayer in beating the assault charge, regardless of the extenuating circumstances. In the end, Ellis was convicted of the lesser charges of resisting arrest and disturbing the peace. The plea bargain stipulates she must attend two hours of anger management class. </p> <p> "MANNERS ARE OF MORE importance than laws," wrote Edmund Burke. "Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend." But good manners are today considered passé, a quaint and spurious remnant of our dark past. So many of today's young people simply do not care how their rude or anti-social behavior affects others. It is almost like no one else exists but himself or herself. I experience this form of anti-social behavior on a daily basis, whether it is the young hoodlums in the street outside my window playing loud and obscene music at 3 a.m. or young people talking loudly and obscenely on their cell phones during a movie. And you can see where they get it. I have attended theater productions where adults bring their toddlers and allow them to chat endlessly throughout the performance, no doubt finding this behavior "cute." </p> <p> If our young are not taught good manners, they are well-schooled in resentment studies, during which they learn the various benefits of victimhood and the importance of political correctness. Good manners will never get anyone 15 minutes of fame, but bad manners and crying racism is almost guaranteed to buy you fifteen minutes and then some. </p> <p> The tragedy is that by rushing to Ellis's defense, by excusing her actions, and by concocting blanket racism charges against an entire community, the "various coalitions" and civil rights groups have done great damage to the laudable goal of combating racial prejudice. </p> <p> Perhaps now that the rock star has returned home to Louisiana, the Ellis-and-mainstream-media-created racial tensions will cool and Kennett, Missouri, can get back to being what it was: a normal southern town trying to deal with serious economic problems. </p> </div></div></div>Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:08:00 +0000admin40509 at http://spectator.orgSpeaking Truth to Powerhttp://spectator.org/articles/41683/speaking-truth-power
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn.spectator.org/styles/article_page/s3/1240977461144.jpg?itok=80wE5edX" width="658" height="374" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p> Some years ago, a priest friend of mine suggested that the legalization of same-sex marriage might be even more morally harmful to our nation than the scourge of abortion. How, I wondered at the time, could anything be more harmful than taking the lives of our innocent children. And then I realized that most people are not in favor of abortion but, as Rush Limbaugh often points out, they pity those around them who might be in need of that awful procedure. But the advent of the push for homosexual marriage goes much deeper; it represents a war on truth. </p> <p> As we all know, liberals are crafty in their deceit; even tampering with the English language to further their aims. If they find that their ideas are not sitting well with average Americans, they simply change the labels. Think that abortion sounds too harsh? Let's call it a women's reproductive health issue. Have real scientists proved that the Earth is cooling and not warming? Let's then use the term climate change to terrify the populace. Does the word homosexual imply too much of its true meaning? Demonize those that use it by calling them homophobes. </p> <p> These and other tactics of the left point toward this inescapable conclusion: it is not equality, or human rights or any other pleasant-sounding euphemisms that are behind much of their agenda. It is a deliberate attack on truth. It is their intention to strip the notion of objective truth from our national ethos. And when there is thought to be no real and permanent truth, when everyone has their own truths which are based on prevailing cultural norms or whims, who then will wield the power to make and enforce our laws? You guessed it. </p> <p> But how to go about it? Where does the objective truth -- which for thousands of years has condemned homosexual behavior and infanticide as harmful to society -- still reside? It is in the shrinking abode of religion, as practiced around the world by people of faith. This then is the principal goal of the left; to separate the people from God by declaring that religion must be cordoned off from public life, that its tenets have no place in politics or anywhere else outside the church door. </p> <p> Yes, it is God himself who is in the crosshairs of liberals around the world and it's not difficult to see why. If even the teachings of Natural Law can be made to seem obsolete, then the world will be wide open to any group with the power and machinery to make their truth law. That is why all modern totalitarian governments have made religion -- "the opiate of the people" -- their first target. And this plan is well underway in the United States. </p> <p> As if we needed further proof, along comes the <em>New York Times</em> with a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/us/27atheist.html?_r=1&amp;em"> piece</a> entitled, "More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops," by religion writer, Laurie Goodstein. It is mostly a touch-feely account of what wonderful folks atheists are, how they organize picnics and volunteer at soup kitchens while positing that their cause is somehow noble, "like environmentalism or muscular dystrophy." </p> <p> Yes, they're just a harmless bunch of Americans who are troubled by their belief that they are viewed as "social pariahs." But the money line hits you like a slap in the face: "They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.…The most important thing is coming out of the closet." </p> <p> The piece goes on to point out that these atheists are -- surprise, surprise -- "fed by outrage over the Bush administration's embrace of the religious right," and that they are "pooling resources to lobby in Washington for separation of church and state." And so it would seem that they, like their homosexual brethren, are not merely content to shed their pariahdom, but to change the very fabric of our moral underpinning and rule of law. </p> <p> We're often told that it is improper and even unfair for the majority of Americans to impose their views on others in the form of law, as if that's not how the supreme law of our land was written. Those who love the Constitution realize that while it protects the rights of minorities, religious and otherwise, the very nature of the processes to amend it not only infer, but mandate majority rule. </p> <p> Make no mistake about it; our nation is in deep trouble if we continue to allow tiny minorities to dictate our way of life. Atheism, abortion, and homosexuality are all negatives, they have no affirmation of life in them. Which is to say that they lack the animating power of God, a power that has blessed this country for over two hundred years. </p> </div></div></div>Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:06:00 +0000admin41683 at http://spectator.org